So people must not go to the store without incident, right? Because I never, ever have seen a story about that.

And police officers probably never stop someone to give them a ticket and the offender is polite and admits that he was speeding. Because I have never seen a story about that.

Nuclear plants probably don't operate for years on end without melting down. Because a NEXUS search doesn't show any stories about that.

And millions of children couldn't go knocking on strangers doors each year begging for candy and have no razorblades in them, right? Because that definitely isn't in the news.

The news is the news exactly because it is out of the ordinary, or in other words rare. Someone being raped and then hacked to death makes news in most places in America. It ain't news in Darfur precisely because it is happening all the time.

I highly recommend the book, "Freakonomics". It's an economist's analysis of various topics using only data and facts, looking at a variety of fascinating topics.

In this case, the topic is the danger to children of a gun vs. a swimming pool. It turns out the swimming pools are much more dangerous, yet you almost never see articles about those incidents in anything other than local papers. It's not sensational enough.

Similarly, DGUs aren't sensational, yet if you look in the right places, they ARE present in a number of smaller newspapers, just not picked up by AP and the like. The story "A woman was confronted by a masked man in her home, but when she produced a pistol, he fled" doesn't sell a paper. Just not interesting enough to most...and it tends to violate most reporters' personal belief system. There is an entire podcast where the entire thing is simply reading through the recent DGUs it was able to find or were sent in from various locations. The NRA doesn't have a problem listing about 10 or 12 DGUs in each month's issue of their magazine either (search for "Armed Citizen"). And Clayton Cramer's blog collects such incidents as well at http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogger.html

Just because you did or did not see something in the mainstream media does not constitute a valid study on which to base conclusions. They're primary goal is to gain recognition and money, and only exciting stories get the attention. Seeing media coverage recently, one might conclude that home-built balloons in Colorado backyards are a threat to children and should be banned...

Exactly. Look at Caleb's recent DGU. Suspect produced a knife and attempted to rob him, he threw his coffee at the attacker and drew a .25 caliber pistol, at which point the attacker ran off and the police were called.

You'll rarely see instances like that in the news, instances where a crime was stopped without the intended victim firing a shot.

Tho the fact that this story never made national news does seem VERY strange to me.http://chuckpalahniuk.net/forum/1000041/georgia-student-uses-gun-to-save-his-life-others

It has all it takes to be a sexy news story. The criminals were VERY vocal about their violent intents, the victims were young college students, not inner city youth, or older professionals or retirees. And it was a person with a conceal carry permit who is a college student (lots of talk about conceal carry campus these days).

Even more gruesome was the attackers were likely neighbors (or at least lived in the same off-campus housing) and it appeared that the women were to be raped before they were to be murdered.

Even more interesting one of the party goers caught a stray bullet.

This is a VERY sensational atypical defensive gun use story, and the National News didn't TOUCH it.

In the last year, I've heard of two defensive gun uses by people I knew of before the incident. One being Caleb's, the other an in-law in my hometown. In neither case was anyone seriously hurt.

In both cases I know significant details-Full (and uncommon) name of the victim, the time and place of the incident.

Although the local story did make our small newspaper (Circulation under 7000 copies) I was unable to find either story via either Google or Google News.

I have no doubt both of these stories happened, but effectively neither story is available nationally.

As for the incident in question--The initial story typically shows at least some signs of a dysfunctional family, a very young grandmother with custody. This is actually very minor compared to the usual family life in these stories, although the problems often don't show up in the news until follow up stories a few days later.

Since we often hear about wrong way drivers in the media and we seldom hear about people driving the right way isn't it more likely that people driving the wrong way are more common then the people driving the right way?